50 E. J. Boosey and Alec Brooksbank—Breeding Results


much to our astonishment, a most beautiful family in spite of the

fact that from her general decrepit appearance she seemed anything

but promising as a stock bird. The same thing happened with a pair

of Rosellas, of which the cock was a fine and extremely healthy aviary-

bred specimen and his wife an obviously aged bird with an overgrown

beak. Having been caged for many years, she was somewhat alarmed

at the sight of a nest-box, and even when her young husband eventually

induced her by force to enter it, she showed how out of practice she

was by laying as her first egg a curious-looking object with a waist,

shaped like an hour-glass ! Her subsequent efforts were more normal,

and it is to her credit that she finally reared two fine youngsters.


Barrabands did well, though one infanticidal cock tried, as usual,

to murder the first of his family of five to emerge from the nest. He

has to be most carefully watched, and the moment the first young one

appears he is put into a small adjoining aviary, where his wife can see

him but where he, much to his disgust, is forced to contemplate his

growing family without being able to tear them to pieces. Luckily,

such behaviour in a Barraband is entirely abnormal.


Many-colours did very well and one young hen in a brood of four

has moulted out with nearly as much red on the lower breast as a

cock. She is being kept for experimental purposes. Two of our

pairs alone reared ten between them.


Early in the year one of our hen Hooded Parrakeets was mated

to a cock Bed-rump, the result being a brood of four hybrids. As far

as we are aware, this cross has only once been obtained before, in the

case of Lord Tavistock, but the young ones died almost immediately

on leaving the nest. It was amusing to see the hen Hooded’s out¬

raged astonishment on being expected to nest in the spring, when no

self-respecting Hooded dreams of setting up house until September

at the earliest ! One hopes that if another year she can be provided

with a mate of her own species, she will be able to persuade him of

the many advantages to be enjoyed by children who leave the nest

in June instead of December. The three young cock hybrids are at

present somewhat like a Red-rump to look at, but they are getting

red patches on the wings, orange feathers round the vent, and a greyish

back and hood. The latter, of course, may eventually go jet black.



